Excerpt: King by Aria Cole

King Williams has seen the other side of hell, his tortured solitude hiding pain behind the cut of his marble jaw. Stubborn fortitude has gotten him this far, but one night with Piper at a club party is all it takes to unravel the walls he’s built. Now he can’t get her out of his head. His obsessive need rages before he pulls her in so deep both of their lives land on the line. The only thing that matters might be the only thing he can’t protect.When Piper Parish spots King, high-ranking member of the Sinister Knights MC, nearly naked late one night, it isn’t the first time he’s caught her eye. It is, however, the first time she’s set eyes on the cobblestoned abs and chiseled lines etched into this bad boy’s body. Like a flash of lightning in the darkness, Piper finds herself thrown into a whirlwind ride with the brooding biker…a ride he will never let her forget.Warning: King is one sexy, moody Harley ridin’ bad boy. he’s Piper’s idea of devilish, dark, attractive and so off-limits. Until now. He’ll stop at nothing to make her his, but is she ready to buckle in for the ride of a lifetime?

ONEPiper
“I love him, Piper. I know I’ve said it before, but I know for sure this time. Truly,” Anna breathed at my ear, squeezing my elbow once.
“Ryker is mad about you. I can see it. Just the way the grouchy old bear as glaring at us now…” Ryker huffed, taking a long swallow from his beer bottle. “Despite your sunshiny disposition, I’m glad you’re back.” I glanced at the man of the hour, still hovering a few feet away from his girl, just in earshot, looking as if he were ready to steal her away from me at any minute.
He probably was.
I sucked in a sigh, eyes casting not for the first time at King, scowling from across the room, a matching beer bottle in his hand. I’d been wishing lately that King would look at me the same way Ryker was looking at Anna now.
Anna deserved happiness, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Ryker was the man who made her happy. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t a tiny bit jealous of the love she’d found. I’d taken to spending so much more time at the ranch in the last few years since Ryker had gone up to County, not that Anna needed a babysitter, but Ryker being gone was tough on her.
Some nights I’d just held her in her bed and let her cry on my shoulder.
There was nothing else I could do.
Not only had Anna been recovering from an assault suffered at the hands of someone she trusted. But then Ryker, the very person who’d saved her from a far worse fate, had been stolen from her life too. Anna was never quite the same after Ryker was gone.
And now that Ryker was back and Anna’s face was plastered with a radiant smile, I was left with only one person on my mind.
Someone I’d seen hovering in the shadows for years now, just out of reach, broad and brooding and smarter than any other person I’d ever known.
I’d grown up like a little sister to the Sinister Knights, but from the very beginning, I’d had an uncontrollable crush on the quietest of the crew, King Williams. Always thoughtful, respectful, with a wry sense of humor and a full beard that sent butterflies fluttering around my stomach.
“I’ll text you later, okay?” Anna grinned, Ryker’s hand pulling her from me already.
“Have fun!” I waved her off, unable to help her infectious grin from covering my face too. I loved nothing more than seeing my best friend happy, even if the guy who made her feel that way was one big, tall, scary motherfucker.
To each her own, I figured.
Just as my eyes settled on the sound system set up in one corner, King came into view, head bent and eyes trained on my heavily lined ones.
He was so devastating it almost took my breath away.
He closed the distance, eyes never leaving mine, and he was suddenly in my space and draining all the oxygen from my lungs.
“H-hi,” I stuttered.
“Piper.” He nodded, pausing at my shoulder, a thousand unspoken things in his eyes.
I gnawed on my bottom lip, not able to form a single word.
King and I had had a hundred conversations about a hundred different things over the years, but now I was suddenly choking on my tongue.
“How’s Anna?” King finally asked, breaking his gaze.
“Great, now that Ryker is here.”
King nodded, a sly grin cocking up one side of his mouth.
The air hung heavy between us, energy so thick and suffocating it nearly swept me under just being so close. I no longer felt like a little girl next to this man; I felt like a woman, independent and strong, worthy of his attention.
I pressed my lips together, stomach swirling to the point of dizzying irritation before the first few chords of a Tom Petty song came through the stereo.
I covered my lips, stifling a giggle as I thought of one summer night when Ryker and King had caught Anna and me out after midnight, giggling as we talked about boys we had crushes on. Even then, King had sucked me in, the dark way his energy sucked up all the air in a room. He’d been making my insides turn cartwheels since day one.
“Wanna dance?” I blurted, half regretting it.
His guarded grin turned up, eyes dancing before a palm tucked in at my waist and pulled me a few inches closer to his body.
I nearly lost my head then.
I swallowed the ball of nerves in my throat and slid my hand along the hard muscle of his bicep.
“The only person I want abusing that pretty lip is me,” King muttered, thumb catching my bottom lip and pulling it from its prison beneath my teeth.
“Oh.”
His smile deepened when he twisted our fingers together, turning me in a circle under his arm and then leaning me back into a heavy dip. The strong angle of his Roman nose trailed up the dip of my throat, lips brushing against my fiery hot skin and nearly causing me to swoon into a pool of bliss between his leather boots.
“I swear, every time I hear this song I’m with you.” He pulled my lips closer, faintly touching as we danced close. His hand was positioned at the small of my back now, melding our bodies a little more.
“Really?” I asked.
He nodded, eyes darting to the ceiling as he thought back. “When Saint, Ryker, and I taught you and Anna how to drive by using the old diesel around the pasture.”
I shook my head, laughing at the memory.
Anna had stalled the old manual transmission at least a dozen times, and just when Ryker was about to lose it, he’d gotten behind the wheel to prove a point and stalled it himself.
“That was a fun day.” I giggled.
“We’ve had a lot of fun days,” he said, other hand slipping over the nape of my neck, drawing me a little closer into his orbit. Making me a little more drunk on all things King. “And remember when Prez almost caught you and Anna sneaking out of her window one night?”
“Oh, yeah.” I nodded, the faint memory growing clearer as I remembered King pulling up on his bike just at the moment Prez was about to question where we were going. Instead, he thought we were only out talking to King, no harm, no foul there. “We never went out that night, got too scared and crawled back into Anna’s window. We made popcorn and watched The Breakfast Club.”
“I know.” King exhaled at my neck, sending a shiver skittering down my spine.
“How do you know?”
His fingers looped into the hair at my temple, his hard body pressed so closely to mine I was sure I could feel his heavy erection stretching past my navel. “Do you think I would have let you leave? I got you off the hook with Prez, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know what the hell you were up to. I woulda tanned your hide if you’d tried to sneak out again.”
My knees went weak, my breaths suddenly ragged as I thought about his body against mine, our clothes discarded on the floor, his lips tracing the lines of my body…
His callused palms traced down to my backside, the dress that spanned high across my thighs suddenly feeling like too much fabric separating us.
I didn’t know what tomorrow might hold, but I didn’t even care. Just having King’s hands on me was a fantasy I’d dreamed of so many nights I couldn’t even begin to count. Now here it was, so close to all falling into place.
“King!” Prez’s voice boomed from across the room.
King sighed heavily, hands gripping at the flesh of my backside as his forehead landed on mine. “I wish to fuck I didn’t have to answer that.”
I pushed a hand through his hair, my urge to purge the frown from his face strong. “Duty calls.”
“So it does.” His grip on my backside loosened, lips hovering just out of reach.
I swallowed, waiting, silently begging for his lips to touch mine, before Prez bellowed one last time. “King! Now!”
My handsome, thoughtful biker grunted under his breath, nodding once, eyes catching mine for one long moment before he turned, head down, and walked away from me.
Having King to myself would never be easy around the Sinister Knights. What was I thinking? That maybe now was finally our time?
I was under the influence of Anna’s contagious lovey-dovey shit, Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers, and that delicious, woodsy masculine scent that seemed to follow King everywhere.
Who the hell smelled that good anyway?

Aria Cole is a thirty-something housewife who once felt bad for reading dirty books late at night, until she decided to write her own. Possessive alpha men and the sassy heroines who love them are common, along with a healthy dose of irresistible insta-love and happily ever afters so sweet your teeth may ache.For a safe, off-the-charts HOT, and always HEA story that doesn’t take a lifetime to read, get lost in an Aria Cole book!
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